


in a future time;

by thehandsingsweapon



Series: in a future time; [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, back on my mythology references bullshit, greek summer of gay pining, lgbtq+ people in history: victor nikiforov's personal soapbox, pretentious poetry abounds, queen victoria has been dead for one hundred slutty years, victor's an archaeologist and historian, yuuri's a poet and a writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:43:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: After failing to publish his final collection of poems for his master's degree, Yuuri Katsuki retreats to Minako Okukawa’s summer house on the Thessaly coast. One bright afternoon, a diver emerges from the Aegean sea: hair the color of moonlight, eyes the color of the tides. He’s an archaeologist, Yuuri learns. Not just any archaeologist. He is Victor Nikiforov, whose first book, Beloved, is one of Yuuri's favorite pieces of non-fiction literature. Yuuri’s spent his whole life enraptured by ancient myths, has wandered countless museums to look into the time-washed, smooth faces of Apollo, of Persephone. Only now does he understand why the Oracles gave such dire warnings to the family of Psyche; why they ever insisted Cupid was the one god all other gods feared. Victor unlocks something that saturates his work; makes Yuuri understand why Sappho ever wrote 'let me tell you this: someone in some future time will remember us.'





	1. hyacinthus

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fic from _Born to Make Art History,_ which was [the first zine I was ever accepted to as a contributor](https://handsingsweapon.tumblr.com/post/181570552771/my-participants-copy-of-borntomakearthistoryzine) and which introduced me to a whole host of amazing people. I've recompiled all the pieces associated with the fic narrative into one story (so I'll be deleting the others shortly, apologies to anyone who bookmarked them! orz). Chapters 3-5 and 7 were published in the zine; Chapters 1-2 and 6 were promo works. There's also a collection of short poems I wrote as a prompt week included in this series!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who gave this love and support. It's the best writing I did in all of 2018.

“Vitya.” Only Yakov can manage to make a family nickname sound like an insult. “Do you want to tell me why you thought it was a good idea to call one of the trustees of the British Museum a  _toothy old hag clinging to the incorrect ideals of the 19th century with both claws?_ ”

Victor is miserable. It’s been cold and rainy in London, and now that he’s finished  _Beloved’s_ book tour, he’s not quite sure what to do next. Beyond the fact that his thesis has been published and is making waves, or that he was top of his doctoral class at Cambridge, this one  _tiny_ outburst with a CBE has closed an incredible number of doors, and now he’s the only one of his peers who doesn’t have a job offer lined up for this next phase of his career. “... She said she’d been forwarded my work and wanted to clarify the board’s position on the Parthenon marbles, in case of any press, because of the Byron commentary.” He took the meeting, of course; even Victor knows enough to know it’s impolitic to decline someone who’s got letters after their name that were granted by the Queen. “I told her that I’ve read the Museum’s official position several times, that I think it’s a lousy excuse for empire, that they’ve been stealing little pieces of culture from all over the world for years. That their position is not only indefensible, but also laughably out of touch.” He pauses, imagines that Yakov must be counting to ten, because the yelling hasn’t commenced yet. “... It went downhill from there, because I pointed out that for a collection that argues its merits on the basis of its diversity, the curators do a sorry job presenting anything other than a heteronormative narrative that isn’t always supported by actual fact, that they’re all terrified of offending delicate British sensibilities, and that Queen Victoria has been dead for over a hundred slutty, slutty years, and it’s time the planet got to move the fuck on … Yakov, are you still there?”

“I am,” grunts Yakov. “I poured myself a drink. I’m trying to decide if the Russian language has sufficient vehicles for telling you how much of an idiot you are.” Victor’s used to criticism from Yakov, but somehow it never stings any less than the first time, and he grits his teeth to bear the subsequent lecture he receives about professionalism and how he has to learn how to respect others in his field if he expects to be allowed to work in it. “Even when you disagree with them,” Yakov mutters. “ _Especially_ when you disagree.”

“I can’t sit here and be complicit while we make the same mistakes!” Victor snaps. “Apollo and Daphne. Bernini. It’s four hundred years old. Thanks to its existence, we get four hundred years of remembering Apollo’s primary love affair as being with a nymph who rejected him and got turned into a tree. Meanwhile, there’s actual erotic red vase art of his lover Hyacinthus, in the embrace of Zephyrus no less, and —”

“I’m the one who showed you that piece,” Yakov interrupts. “And I’ve read your thesis, Vityusha, I don’t need it in lecture format —”

“Where is the modern masterpiece for Apollo and Hyacinthus, Yakov? For the Spartan prince who was his  _actual lover?_ ” Victor asks. His voice cracks on the edge of his frustration; Yakov and his advisor both warned him that his research topic might have been too personal. Now here he is, feeling a tell-tale prick in his eyes. “... If you’re someone like me, Yakov, you can’t walk into a museum and find yourself there. It’s not possible. Maybe you get close with  _The Sleeping Hermaphroditus,_ until you realize that the first person to snatch it up after rediscovery was Cardinal Borghese, and if you think too long about  _that_ while you walk around the Villa to take in the rest of its collection, you’ll realize many of the highlights are romanticized rapes, and you’ll see no mention of the fact that Scipione was probably gay and that Pignatelli wasn’t his  _close friend_ … but no, it’s a wonderful collection. From such a great Catholic, too.” Victor can’t help but retreat into the safe defense of sarcasm. “Yakov, I’ll go out of work and hungry and homeless before I participate in this for another generation. Did you know the University Press passed on my thesis? Karpisek had to forward it to a Literature Chair to get it published outside of the university. That’s the real  _Beloved_ story  _._ I left Russia to get away from this sort of shit. I can’t do it. Don’t ask me to.”

Yakov is silent for a moment, long enough that Victor checks his phone again, just to be sure he hasn’t been hung up on. “Vityusha,” he says, gently this time, as though Victor’s once again an excitable child looking over pottery in his study, “If you hold every institution on earth to a standard you already know they’re not meeting, how, exactly, do you expect the work to get started?” It’s a question Victor doesn’t have the answer to, and Yakov must know that. He lets the silence stretch until it’s almost uncomfortable. And then he says this:

“We found a shipwreck in Thessaly,” Yakov grunts. “Dives are scheduled for the summer. You’ll take a  _Visiting Scholar_ title and frankly lousy pay, and in return you’ll try to control your temper so that I can keep my promise to your father and attempt to make sure you make something out of yourself.”  _Thessaly,_ Victor echoes. He can hear Yakov resisting a smile. “Walk where the Myrmidons stood. Stand in the places where Achilles must have met Patroclus, if you like.”

“... Alright,” Victor hears himself agree. The sharp knot in his chest loosens, just a little.  _Alright._

 

_\- - -_

 

> **Excerpt, Introduction** **  
> ** from  _Beloved_ _  
> _ by Victor Nikiforov
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -
> 
>  
> 
> For the past four years, this book has been a labor of love, and perhaps some will find it all-too-flawed for that very reason. I am not here to tell my readers that Alexander the Great was gay by our standards. Almost certainly, the label as it exists today would befuddle an ancient audience whose sexual proclivities existed within a complex intersection of body worship, role expectations, coming of age rites, and social class, rather than our matrix of orientation and expression. What I am here to do, however, is to highlight the lies of omission that have been told by anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians for centuries: to point out how often instances of same-sex love have been, at best, recast by scholars as  _intimate friendships,_ and at worst, censored entirely  _._ The scholarship of the Regency and Victorian eras rarely requires the explicit confirmation of the affairs of heterosexual couples, often accepting them at face-value, a courtesy unimagined for those of the same sex. That multiple authors of antiquity considered Achilles and Patroclus lovers, for instance, is not a fact a student of Homer stumbles upon until well into his graduate studies, and even then the topic is contentious.
> 
> It is strange the way a modern audience expects the explicit confirmation of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus; stranger still the way anthropologists rush with lurid glee to the bedrooms of these historical figures, and there insist upon physical evidence, as though the act of sex were the only proof of real love. Nevermind that we watch Achilles weep as he weeps for no one else. Still they have the audacity to say:  **it is not enough.**
> 
> Herein, then, is my flawed attempt to restore to these ancient figures their true histories. It is my deepest hope that, by letting them see the light of day once more, I will have taken steps towards a modern world that dares to do the same for the living.

 


	2. odysseus

“Look, I recognize that it’s an amazing poem, Professor.” Yuuri Katsuki is a twenty-one year old at Exeter University who deeply, deeply regrets having gotten himself into this discussion. He’s currently being stared at by half of the class and their instructor, walking back the seeming blasphemy of disliking a poem once quoted by Nelson Mandela in prison. They are talking, of course, about  _Invictus._ “I just think it gets used in popular culture in a pretty unfortunate way.” He has been trying and failing to indicate that there are some circumstances that even a stiff-upper-lip can’t withstand; trying to say something, perhaps, about emotional repression. Words, of course, are failing him, which begs the question: why pursue a degree in literature at all?

“Go on, Mr. Katsuki.”

“It just seems to me that some things ought to be felt. I know, I know:  _bloody, but unbowed._ It’s clear he’s facing strife. But aren’t there things people can’t always conquer?” He will never explain the way he needs to know that some fights can’t be won, not to this audience. Back in his dormitory there is a prescription for anxiety medication. He wants to know that his continued failure to regulate his own thoughts is not for lack of trying or for some internal flaw which he has yet to correct. At best, Yuuri expects to wrestle the wild, feral half of himself into a draw for the rest of his life.  _Perhaps Henley, with his focus on the soul and not the body, changes the terms of the fight?_ A different student suggests. Yuuri disagrees with the premise; as far as he can tell the distinction between a soul and a body is made up of magic and wishful thinking, but he’s grateful, because the conversation redirects and provides a window through which he can escape debate. And that is for the best. His palms are sweaty and his heart is racing.

Maybe it’s time to talk to the counseling center again. It was hard enough to darken those doors the first time: to admit that he has had every possible advantage and yet still he finds himself existing right at some water-line of fear and self-loathing, forever afraid of the next terrible wave. His father is a wildly successful chef in Brighton; his parents are the co-owners of one of just a handful of independent, five-star resorts left. He’s grown up wanting for remarkably little: he’s had a liberal, well-rounded education, provided at private schools and with plenty of extra time for the arts. His parents and his sister are sensible, pragmatic, supportive people. He’s ordinary and unremarkable and probably too-sensitive, by comparison; he dreams of being a writer, but doubts himself every step of the way.

The reality is this: he will graduate with a teacher’s qualification, probably, and in a not-too-distant world he will face a room of pre-teens, and he will develop a habit of shoving his hands into his pockets to hide the way they shake whenever he stands at the front of the class.

After class, he’s approached by a brunette with freckles who sits a few seats over in the lecture hall. “Hey, Yuuri?” She asks, sheepish, flashing a nervous smile. “I liked what you had to say, today.”

Yuuri’s life would be easier if he could like this girl. She has a button nose and a little bit of a flush on the apples of her cheeks, and someday someone will decide these things are precious. Right now she’s trying too hard to get to know him, though, and Yuuri is the sort of person who has a moat, high walls, and a labyrinth crafted around the fragile center of his heart. And that’s just the least of her obstacles. Yuuri is the product of private school; he’s endured crew practices and watched fencing matches. He has far too clear a picture of the way sweat can drip down a man’s throat or the way the muscles of the forearm expand and contract as the body moves. “Thanks,” he says, and he lets the conversation die there. His roommate, sworn in on this secret, will convince him to go out this weekend, and he’ll have too much to drink, and he’ll stumble into a bed he doesn’t intend to stay in. For a moment, this will silence the white noise; he will grip the headboard as he rises and falls, stumbling into a cheap and momentary bliss. He breaks more than one heart when he leaves in the morning, convinced nobody could possibly want him more than just the one time.

Two years later, Yuuri is staring down the suggested curriculum for the secondary school he teaches at in Dover. Suggested poetry:  _Invictus._ It will be easier to follow the existing rubric; he’s only had just the one summer to formalize lesson plans and now is probably not the time to get creative. He’s here temporarily, after all; the prior teacher is on maternity leave. He’s taken up a habit of going for a run in the mornings before class; the white cliffs are spectacular and the sights and sounds of the channel always clear his head. He walks into his classroom and sits on the desk, and he looks out at twenty teenaged faces from every possible walk of life. He asks for a volunteer to read the poem, so that when the words  _I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul_ sound, they are not declared with his voice. He lets it sink in and polishes his glasses to distract himself from his nerves. “I don’t feel that way very often,” says Yuuri, who flashes a wry, self-deprecating smile. “Do any of you?”

At the end of the semester, the school’s administration lets him know that the prior teacher is due back from her leave and that he’s no longer needed. He passes through London on his way home; Phichit, his old roommate, here now on a job where his title literally is  _Social Media Strategist,_  offers him sympathy  _you’ve been fired_ drinks. “What will you do now?”

Yuuri, who’s been thinking about the day he started letting that one class of students actually tell him how they felt, who’s lately been gobbling up more and more anthologies by modern poets who refuse to shirk away from the realities of now, shrugs. “I’ve been thinking about grad school,” he admits. Yuuri has a terrible time opening up; he’s constantly afraid of what might happen if he did. Yet on his nightstand is a notebook, and in that notebook, he sometimes approaches something that feels honest.

A little over two years after  _that,_ Celestino Cialdini’s booming voice and broad smile and big hair will suggest that even that work is not quite good enough. “It’s very candid, your thesis. Which I admire, I really do.” Yuuri waits for the other shoe to fall, because he’s known for a long time that he’s a dime-a-dozen writer, and all Celestino’s doing is saying so. “... It’s just a little underwhelming. And muted. You approach your own anxiety at a distance, almost like it’s not your own.”

“It’s safer, that way,” Yuuri mutters, and Professor Cialdini, who is, of course, both a romantic and an optimist, reminds him that ships are made to be at sea. This is how he fails to graduate on time; quietly and without fireworks. He makes plans to lick his wounds back at the hotel in Brighton, but word somehow gets around to his mother’s most intrepid friend, Minako Okukawa. Minako is a whirlwind of a person: a former prima ballerina, and, at one time, his dance tutor. A choreographer in high demand. A three-time divorcee.

“I told your mother I’m carting you off to Thessaly for the summer,” she informs him, over the phone. Minako is perhaps one of the only people Yuuri tolerates bullying him around like this, and maybe only because the habit, from those childhood dance classes, never quite faded.

“Minako, you don’t need to take pity on me.”

“I’m not taking pity on you,” Minako snorts. “I’m taking advantage of several key facts: I’ll be teaching at three different dance camps this summer, and so I’ll be in and out of the house, and  _you_ need a place to write where you can’t hear Mari’s punk music from three rooms over. Besides. I’m telling you from personal experience that there’s absolutely zero shame in picking up a handsome Mediterranean lover, Yuuri. I’m sure there will be plenty of men available.”

These are the kinds of frank conversations Minako is able to have without blinking. Yuuri envies her fearlessness, her self-assurance. “I am not going to Greece to have sex with random men,” Yuuri grumbles. He refuses to have this conversation with someone who used to correct his posture, at age eight.

“Of course not,” drawls Minako. “You’re coming to Greece to housesit. I’m glad we’ve established that.”

 

\- - - 

 

> **anxiety**   **  
> ** unpublished;  
>  by Yuuri Katsuki 
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -
> 
>  
> 
> I think it is something like  
>  being in the trunk of your own car  
>  as it rattles down the hill
> 
> You do not know how you got  
>  to where you are
> 
> and you do not know who it is  
>  doing the driving.
> 
> Didn’t you get your license,  
>  the authorities say after  
>  all sensible people at the scene of the crash
> 
> _Breathe,_ they tell you  
>  as though your hands  
>  were ever  
>  on the wheel
> 
> You cannot choose not to drive;  
>  at birth each of us is given  
>  only the one vehicle
> 
> And every grey morning  
>  you must climb into yours again.


	3. hephaestus sees aphrodite

> **Hephaestus sees Aphrodite** **  
> **from _someone in a future time_  
>    
>  by Yuuri Katsuki
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -
> 
>  
> 
>   
>  Let us consider  
>  Aphrodite as she rose  
>  perfectly-formed,  
>  stepping out of the sea foam.
> 
> Imagine, if you will,  
>  the curl of her toes in the sand,  
>  that first walk on the beach,
> 
> but do not linger too long  
>  on the kiss of the wind  
>  when it played with her hair:  
>    
>  Even the gods knew  
>  the perils of too much beauty.
> 
> Let us instead remember  
>  Hephaestus, who must have  
>  looked upon her  
>  in such terrible shame.
> 
> He would not have been the first  
>  to come upon something so lovely,  
>  and then curse his own inadequacy,  
>  bemoaning his brokenness,
> 
> to lock himself away  
>  with the work of his hands  
>  trying and trying —
> 
> — to be worthy, perhaps,  
>  of this wonder
> 
> And now we know  
>  He was also not the last.

 

\- - -

 

If Yuuri Katsuki were to describe his most recent semester at King’s College, London, it might be thus: _things fall apart._ He’s the only one in his master’s program who hasn’t graduated already: a last-minute change of advisors resulted in a rejected thesis and a summer extension, little more than a final, pathetic scramble for his degree. _I just think the poems are a little underwhelming,_ Professor Cialdini — Yuuri’s new advisor, a hopeless romantic fond of gestures as big and sweeping as his own trademark ponytail — remarked in his evaluations. _Take the summer to polish it_. Except Yuuri hasn’t been polishing anything. One of his mother’s oldest friends has a summer house in Greece, a trophy secured at the bitter end of her second marriage, and the sparkling Thessaly coast is far from the worst place to lick his wounds. Now semi-retired, Minako comes and goes as she pleases, leaving Yuuri to his own devices half the time while she flits around the continent, consulting on choreography. Left at her villa, Yuuri consoles himself with the summer sun, ancient art, and the poetry of Sappho, trying and failing to transform his work into something with a beating heart and wings, something ready to fledge the nest.

Not far from the coast, an archaeology expedition is steadily uncovering a newly-discovered shipwreck, and Yuuri fills his days by observing their work from the village beach, trying and usually failing to write anything that seems meaningful. He’s used to it, he tells himself; he’s becoming accustomed to fighting losing battles with himself. Today, one of the crew swims to shore, rather than ride back on the boat, and Yuuri watches, in some sort of sun-soaked fugue state, as the diver unzips his wetsuit and peels it down to his waist, shaking tangles and seawater out of a messy platinum bob that’s not quite long enough to hold to a ponytail properly. Yuuri’s thoughts complete a scramble for apt metaphors and land on the _Birth of Venus,_ except that this is something rather more than how he felt looking at Botticelli’s work in the Uffizi for the first time, as an undergraduate studying abroad in Florence.

Suddenly, he relates to the judgment of Paris. Until now, whenever idle daydreams have led Yuuri to imagine himself, transported back in time, it has always been as a follower Apollo or Athena, more interested in ideas and expression than the reality of attraction itself. He’s too frequently ruled by his own anxiety, arriving at the revelation of his feelings slowly, and late: like a mountain climber who discovers the summit empty by the time he arrives. In this moment, he realizes that he is a being in whose halls Aphrodite actually holds terrible sway, a place where she can hold court at her leisure. Yuuri, who’s always scoffed at the idea of love at first sight, remembers that Cupid pricked his own finger, when he first came for Psyche, and he’s thinking about how quickly the poison does its powerful work when he finally realizes that the swimmer is standing in front of him. The diver has the most beautiful, sea-colored eyes, and when he speaks it’s in polite, accented English punctuated with an enchanting smile. “Hello. Sorry to bother. Do you have something to drink?”

 _He’s thirsty,_ thinks Yuuri, incredulous, hysterical. It’s the sort of joke his old roommate would appreciate, meme-ready but out of place here in the land of gods and myths. Next to Yuuri sits a cooler, which is likely why the stranger’s asking, and he fumbles to open it, makes an imperfect offering out of apricot juice and a bottle of water. These gifts are given to diving Adonis with outstretched hands that nearly shake, and are rewarded with another flash of that charming, heart-shaped grin. “Thanks,” says the god-in-flesh who’s just emerged from the Aegean, who proceeds to sit on the sand right next to Yuuri’s beach towel, and stretch. Yuuri can’t help but watch his muscles ripple, and lets the heat transport his overactive imagination back in time. The word _specimen_ is used for bodies like this one, but it’s too vulgar to describe him properly; a sculptor might have once sat for hours in a studio simply to perfect the space between this man’s shoulder blades. “Victor Nikiforov,” says the stranger, and offers Yuuri a hand, which only barely manages to shake, because these same two words appear on the spine of one of Yuuri’s favorite non-fiction books. The book is called _Beloved,_ and it’s a controversial take on the way anthropologists of prior centuries obfuscated the histories of gay men and women, replacing the most intimate parts of their lives with lies of omission, censorship, and erasure. In it, Victor Nikiforov, _ph.D_ , has damned the Puritanical and Victorian scholarship of those who came before him, suggesting that their retellings have never been based in actual fact. And he has argued that the sabotaged narratives have  nonetheless remained embedded in the collective Western consciousness, to the detriment of all who’ve inherited these original sins of the field. _We have forgotten that Cupid’s aim did not adhere to our modern-day standards of attraction._ One of Yuuri’s favorite poems is printed in full in the forward. _In the story of Patroclus, no one survives, not even Achilles, who was nearly a god. …_ Even that text, Victor observes, has its flaws: Gluck, who writes with such precision, a master of her craft, still retreats to the tepid shores of the word friendship in the poem’s first act. Then again, English does not possess the words for a relationship such as this; the Greeks did, but its real meaning, the path towards interpreting it the way an ancient audience might have, is as lost as the library at Alexandria.

Yuuri gathers his courage, and he imperfectly quotes the bit he remembers from its introduction: _“... It is strange the way a modern audience expects the explicit confirmation of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus ... Stranger still the way anthropologists rush with lurid glee to the bedrooms of these historical figures, and there insist upon physical evidence, as though the act of sex were the only proof of real love. Nevermind that we watch Achilles weep as he weeps for no one else. Still they have the audacity to say:_ **_this is not enough._ ** _”_ He chances a glance at Victor, who’s looking at him in open surprise, his lips parted just-so, and offers a nervous smile back. “... Yuuri Katsuki,” murmurs Yuuri, quietly, because if he’s going to make a fool out of himself, giving his name is the least he can do.  “I like to pretend that someday I might be a writer, too.” As soon as he says it, he’s sure it’s the wrong thing to say. As a point of fact, he _isn’t_ a writer: he can’t even cobble together a collection of poems good enough for the university press, and now, on top of all of that, their entire encounter is now going to be recast — not with the soft haze of the afternoon sun or the sea breeze, but the stark and unflattering light of Yuuri’s unfortunate obsession with words, and the curious way that they burrow into him, and then don’t let go.

“I think, maybe,  you already are,” Victor replies. He’s suddenly softer, somehow, like Galatea must have been in the moment when she took her first breath. Or perhaps how Achilles himself was, when the arrow struck. The words of Louise Gluck, printed in the front of his book, say as much: _the gods saw he was a man already dead, a victim of the part that loved, the part that was mortal._

 


	4. icarus

 

> **The Last Kiss of Icarus**  
>  from _someone in a future time_
> 
> by Yuuri Katsuki  
> 
> 
> \- - -  
> 
> 
> The sciences now tell us  
>  that the gravity of stars  
>  is almost inescapable.  
>  Is it any wonder, then,  
>  that Icarus flew too close?
> 
> Yet we have recast him  
>  as a symbol of hubris.
> 
> But which of us does not feel joy  
>  fleeing our own prisons?  
>  Who can look upon Apollo  
>  and not creep closer for his song?
> 
> In all of the paintings,  
>  Icarus appears bronzed  
>  by the sun’s last, lethal kiss
> 
> and we will never know  
>  whether or not he felt regret  
>  as he fell.
> 
> Still, I ask again:
> 
> Which of us would not have wanted  
>  just a taste of the heavens?

 

\- - -

 

Yuuri learns to exist in a strange world where Victor Nikiforov, _genius_ , seems to want to spend time with him. He runs into Victor everywhere: out for mid-morning runs or twilight walks, in the market, along the seashore. Victor talks animatedly and at length about ancient myths, his favorite art, and the work he’s doing now with Yakov Feltsman, who is one of the world’s premier antiquities experts and Victor’s ‘very grumpy’ mentor. _Perhaps the only person willing to put up with me, right now,_ Victor quips, in a self-deprecating way, and Yuuri’s not quite brave enough to ask why that might be the case, or to correct him. Victor explains that although the work at the shipwreck is agonizingly careful and slow, the dives have already uncovered ancient beads and weathered coins. His passion for the subject is as wonderful and charming as the rest of him; and Yuuri’s happy to simply listen to him talk, to whittle away the hours in a special kind of enchantment. Victor seems like all of the heroes of the ancient stories brought back to life, who shows Yuuri how Icarus must have felt, flying so close to the sun. Being around Victor has that same dizzying, heady quality, and Victor himself possesses an inescapable gravity centered on his damnably charismatic smile.

Coming along to see the wreckage one day is, of course, Victor’s idea, and so here Yuuri is now, boarding a boat. “Make yourself useful, Vitya,” snaps Feltsman, already living up to his reputation. Yuuri is having a hard time believing that this is his life, and yet he knows it’s unwise to question the fates. Nearby, Victor sighs and hauls diving gear onto the deck while one of Feltsman’s undergraduate students, interning for the summer, gives both him and Yuuri stink-eye. _Ridiculous,_ Yuuri hears him snort in an aside that’s meant for Victor. _Does he even know what he’s doing?_ The kid’s name is Yuri Plisetsky, and he’s got more bad attitude than all of the furies combined, but he’s not _wrong_ . Yuuri isn’t staff, and he can’t imagine the kinds of favors Victor has called in to get him on board to observe for a day. He has no skills to offer them, and shouldn’t be here, except that Victor insisted once, while Yuuri was busy trying to pay for a gyro, and faced with Victor Nikiforov’s soft smile and shining eyes, it’s entirely beyond Yuuri Katsuki to do anything sensible, like, for instance, _politely declining._

Yuuri knows how to swim, of course, and he’s taken diving lessons before, but it’s been years, and a small part of him insists that he’s bound to mess it all up now. The boat is crowded already, and he’s only going to be in the way. The weather is a little overcast, and the clouds have transformed the cove entirely, proving Homer right about the wine-dark sea, though by all accounts Homer never understood the color of either of those things. That, or: the ancients did not have the proper word for all of the shades of blue, another hypothesis difficult for Yuuri to imagine. It’s always been his favorite color, and Victor’s eyes alone reflect a multitude of its brightest hues.

His nervousness builds as the boat skitters across the water, bouncing on white-caps, and by the time they drop the anchor Yuuri’s anxiety roars louder than the wind. _You don’t belong here,_ it hisses. _You’re an imposter._ It’s true in more ways than one. Everyone on Feltsman’s crew is making their mark on their field, has recovered some little piece of history. And Yuuri? Yuuri has done nothing. Around him, everyone else shuffles into their gear, ready to start the dive, and Yuuri still hasn’t even managed to get into his wetsuit. He fumbles with the zipper, barely registering sounds — splashes, footsteps, and his own name, for instance:

 _Yuuri? Yuuri._ “Yuuri.” Warm hands curl around his own; Victor’s face swims into focus. “Are you okay?”

This is the exact moment that Yuuri registers that he’s having a panic attack in front of Victor Nikiforov, and for a what feels like eternity but must only be seconds, he struggles to breathe, can’t even respond. One of Victor’s hands slides down Yuuri’s neck, and he tilts his forehead against Yuuri’s. “I’ve got you,” he says, so gently that something in Yuuri’s chest loosens just a little bit. “Breathe,” Victor instructs, and Yuuri obeys from the tight, safe circle of his arms, listening to the wind, the waves lapping at the boat, and most of all, the sound of Victor’s voice as he counts out Yuuri’s breath. At some point he must have chosen to stay behind while the others got to work on the dive; Yuuri never noticed.

“I get anxious sometimes,” Yuuri mumbles, which is the understatement of the year, but even now he can’t help but reduce the amount of space he takes up, the severity of his own impulses. He tries more than once to apologize and to send Victor out on the dive, only to be subtly waved off.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Yuuri,” Victor says. Somehow he’s holding on to one of Yuuri’s hands. The boat rocks and drifts: if they hadn’t dropped an anchor, Yuuri’s sure they’d be carried away. “The ship will still be here tomorrow,” Victor adds, as though sitting here babysitting Yuuri is more important than his actual job, when they both know that’s not really the case.

When the others come back on deck, Plisetsky gives them each one of his searing glares. “Amateur,” he scoffs, which earns him a sharp reprimand from Victor in Russian — just how many languages, Yuuri wonders, can Victor speak? Afterwards, Plisetsky is paradoxically both sharper and softer: Yuuri can see the way Yuri studies him, takes his measure, and then retreats to the bridge to stay close to Yakov, keeping a decent amount of distance between himself and Victor.

“He’s got such a chip on his shoulder,” Victor mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. Then he offers a curt laugh. It’s not quite what a laugh should be: there’s an edge to it, the way the wind has a damp chill, now, something that promises rain.

“Something funny?” Yuuri wants to know.

“To Yakov, perhaps,” explains Victor. “It’s exactly the same thing he tells me.” He scrunches up his features and does his best interpretation of Yakov’s booming, authoritative voice. _“Be careful of all those crusades you keep trying to go on, Vitya. You can’t fight all of them at once.”_ It seems to Yuuri that if anyone could, it’d be Victor; after all, Hercules once managed the twelve labors.

“You just need the right help,” he says, before he can stop himself. He means someone like Hermes, someone to carry Victor’s words to all of the winds, but of course it doesn’t come out like that.

“Maybe I do,” agrees Victor, whose smile is slight but endearingly genuine. He’s still holding Yuuri’s hand when the boat comes back to the shore; the afternoon is being cut short early because of the impending storm. Yuuri knows he ought to pull his fingers away, but he just can’t make himself do it. Big drops of rain begin to fall as Victor leads him down the dock, where they’re due to part ways: Victor to a ridiculous magenta Vespa which Yuuri’s seen him drive all over town, Yuuri to make a punishing retreat back up the hill to Minako’s house, where he can hide and be properly ashamed of himself. Instead, Victor tilts his head, and Yuuri thinks he must be imagining the curl of fingers against his palm. “Would you like to get dinner?” Victor asks, which is how Yuuri finds himself on the back of the scooter, chin tucked into the strong line of Victor’s back as he clenches the soaked linen of Victor’s shirt between two tightly closed fists.

In the rain the cobblestones have become wet and the streets slippery; Victor drives carefully and without saying anything at all. Yuuri remembers, quite suddenly, that Victor’s book also mentions the myth of Phaethon, the young man who lost control of the chariot of the sun in a desperate bid to prove himself. Phaethon, Victor reminds his readers, was the lover of the King of Liguria, who so mourned his loss that the gods took pity on him, transformed him into a swan, and then set him free among the stars. Later, it will be all Yuuri thinks to write about.


	5. eros

“It isn’t a date,” Yuuri tells Minako, _again._ She’s been at the summer house for just a few days between dance seminars, and in that timeframe her hawk-eyes have already honed in on the way Yuuri’s admiration for Victor is not strictly professional. She’s made it her goal, lately, to cackle in delight every time Yuuri blushes, and in the last 48 hours has managed to slip the words _your date in Delphi on Thursday_ into an extraordinary number of sentences, in spite of Yuuri’s adamant denials. Tellingly, Yuuri has rummaged through all of his clothes regardless, making a futile effort to transform himself into someone at least a little more worthy to stand in all the light Victor radiates. Which doesn’t matter because they’re not going on a date. Victor is simply taking some findings from the expedition to an expert in Delphi, and wants someone more pleasant than Plisetsky or Feltsman to come along for a three hour drive — in both directions. Now that Yuuri has spent more time with both Plisetsky and Feltsman, he understands how low of a bar that is.

“... Yakov’s doing me a favor this summer,” Victor explains, as they cross the peninsula. _"Beloved_ didn’t make me many friends when I finished my doctorate with it, since it’s so critical of the establishment.” Sometimes Victor simply fits his face into the shape of a smile, but this one has a bitter edge that Yuuri has learned to detect. They’ve been talking about what brought Victor to Greece, and, in an abstract way, what his future plans are. Yuuri has kept his own story simple: _a family friend has a house here, and it’s a good place to spend some time writing._ “It’s not too difficult to infer that I think the whole field is poisoned by this kind of imperialist scholarship. There’s so many pieces that ought to be returned, so many swindled works of art ...”

Yuuri’s able to connect the dots: Victor completed his ph.D at Oxford, and Yuuri’s been to the British Museum, has read their position on a whole variety of international treasures amassed under the flag of the empire and subsequently never returned. “You quoted Byron,” Yuuri prompts, without looking back. He’s got his window rolled down to enjoy the passing summertime fields and the smell of the sea, luxuries that he will surrender back in London. It was already going to be dreary, returning there; except now he will lose Victor, too.

“I did. A bisexual man saw with incredible clarity that removing the Parthenon marbles was an act of vandalism. We don’t call them the Elgin marbles anymore, but they still won’t be returned to Greece. And that’s still more courtesy paid to a set of objects than to the narratives of those who’ve had their entire lives refit to the prudish Victorian sensibilities of the people he criticized.” Victor pauses, flicks a glance Yuuri’s way through the mirror. “Sorry,” he mutters dryly. “Yakov says my soapbox is a little too high, sometimes.”

Except that this is what Yuuri loves about Victor: his passion, his bleeding heart. “Don’t.” When Victor tosses him a curious look, as if to ask _don’t what,_ Yuuri adds: “Apologize. Don’t ever apologize for being yourself.” In response, Victor just smiles as softly as the dawn and says: _you too._

To Yuuri’s surprise, the drop-off at the Delphi Archaeological Museum takes no time at all. It’s an errand that Victor easily could have asked Yuri Plisetsky to run instead. He exchanges cordial, brief notes with one of the curators, and promises to follow up, and that’s it. It leaves plenty of time for Victor to sweep Yuuri into a tour of the museum’s exhibits and then what’s left of the temple complex over lunch. They talk about Apollo and the Oracle; Victor relays centuries of history with such fondness that Yuuri can almost believe he’s been transported back in time. Yuuri spends time taking notes on the dactylic hexameter of the prophecies, studying the neat economy of words issued in every oracular statement. He buys a little book of them in a gift shop, and tells Victor that he’s an inheritor of the mysteries that unfolded here. It puts enough of a pause in Victor’s easy, sure-footed steps that Yuuri hastens to explain himself: “It’s in your work. I know all those people are gone, but what you’re trying to do lets a lot of people who are alive now look back in time and find themselves here.”

In response, Victor reaches for one of Yuuri’s hands, and presses a soft, delicate kiss to the knuckles. “That’s a high compliment.” Yuuri’s sure his whole face must be the color of red clay, but if Victor notices it, he says nothing. “And a noble commission,” he adds instead, looking back towards the grounds. “I’ll try to live up to it.” Then he smiles, mercurial, and retreats into another story about how the oracle’s wisdom once prevailed over all of the armies of Persia. Yuuri has heard, of course, of the 300, and King Leonidas, but not of the subsequent retreat of Athens to the sea and to their ships, or the naval defeat suffered there by the Persians as a result. Then Victor gives a long exhale, studying what remains of the temple. “It’s a beautiful place,” he says, “but it’s also like looking at a skeleton.” The real mystery of Delphi is long gone. They’ve already read, back at the museum, about the influence of Rome and the crimes of the Christians, but it’s different, somehow, when Victor takes a deep breath and says it himself. “... 393 AD. Theodosius I orders the temple closed. _All is ended,_ declares the Oracle. Rome falls just fifteen years later.” Yuuri does not like the way melancholy settles into Victor’s gaze, like his spark has just burnt out. _Know thyself_ is a Delphic maxim, carved into the entrance of the temple here, and Yuuri considers it, deciding that he can, too, be brave as he stands in this ancient, sacred place. He simply reaches for Victor’s hand, and links their fingers together. Victor, in turn, does not let go until they’re back at the car.

Later, he surprises Yuuri by selecting the longer route back, which takes them through a string of seaside villages. They stop in one of them for petrol, gyros, and sweets, and then Victor drives up to a scenic overlook where they can eat together, hosting an impromptu picnic sitting together on the trunk of the car. Ahead, the Pagasetic gulf is impossibly, beautifully blue. Yuuri crumples his wrapper and tosses it back into the paper bag between them. He asks the question he’s been thinking about all day. “... So why write it?” They both know what he’s talking about: Victor’s controversial work in his doctoral thesis, now in public form as _Beloved._ In some ways, Yuuri’s also talking about his own inability to finish his Master’s project, to finally publish. “... If it gave you so much trouble?”

Victor hovers on the brink of an answer before plunging into a confession. “... Because I’m like the people I write about,” he admits quietly, “and if I’m ever important enough to be remembered by history, I don’t want the men I’ve loved to be erased from the story.”

Yuuri has dared to suspect this before, reading _Beloved,_ but it’s different now that Victor’s more than just a concept: he is real flesh and bone, sharing the same secrets Yuuri also keeps. _“You may forget,”_ Yuuri quotes, eyes closed, voice shaky. _“... but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us.”_

“Sappho,” breathes Victor. She is Yuuri’s favorite poet, and Yuuri feels like invoking her is akin to admitting something too big to reside in his own skin. He’s surprised to feel fingers drift along his cheekbone, and opens his eyes to see that Victor is almost close enough to kiss. Sometimes, Victor looks at Yuuri in a way that makes him feel more precious than any prophecy, or worth the trouble of any number of golden apples. “Yuuri. Can I kiss you?”

Yuuri does not want to know what god has granted this wish. He does not want to think about Delphi in ruins, or the way empires rise and fall. Every person they’ve ever talked about is dead, now, and they’re the ones left to do the living. They probably don’t have the sort of love or the kind of lives that will wind up in history books, or artifacts carefully uncovered from the earth and poured over by scholars. All he knows when he surges forward is that Victor’s mouth tastes like honey, shortbread and powdered sugar. _Like ambrosia._ Objectively Yuuri knows that this is not some nectar of the gods, made by nymphs, delivered by doves. Still, when Victor slides off of the boot of the car and turns back, bracketed between Yuuri’s legs, his hands on Yuuri’s knees, leaning in so that they can share a second kiss, the distinction seems immaterial. Whatever else happens for the rest of his life, he will have this one moment — kissing Victor Nikiforov in front of a rose-colored sky, using his hands to convey the things he hasn’t yet learned how to say — forever.

 

\- - -

 

> **On Love: Eros  
>  ** from _someone in a future time_
> 
> by Yuuri Katsuki
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -
> 
>  
> 
> In this morning’s journal, I write:  
>  **Cupid is a mouth**
> 
> Selfishly, perhaps:  
>  I have been devoured by desire,  
> or wish to be consumed, at least.
> 
> Still, it isn’t quite right:  
>  Cupid is a friendly face;  
>  armed not with arrows,   
>  but sea-glass eyes,   
> and a crooked, charming smile.
> 
> For years, I have misunderstood  
> all of the warning signs.
> 
> Now I know this:  
>  when the Oracles cautioned Psyche,  
>  no doubt they discussed his smile,  
> at length, even, and the power it has:
> 
> this morning the sun is clear  
>  and the seagulls are crying,  
> and I finally understand:
> 
> It would bring any man to his knees. 

 


	6. persephone

The days unfold after that, one miracle after another: Yuuri’s second kiss with Victor comes very soon after the first, still leaning against the car; the third and the fourth on the doorstep that night, snuck in between breathless, quiet laughter and farewells so fond that he aches. It’s difficult to imagine how kisses might come to be too difficult to count, like stars, and yet on a clear night, overhead, there they all are, like the galaxy of heroes rendered throughout the heavens. In just a few weeks, Yuuri becomes a regular with Victor’s friends from work; even Plisetsky comes around like a feral cat, nearby and watchful but never close. Together, he and Victor go on dates that are impossible to pretend aren’t dates: they have dinner in half a dozen different restaurants, and on Victor’s days off they hike up to the old monasteries or down to secluded beaches. It’s easy the way that nothing else in Yuuri’s life has ever been easy. Tonight, they’ve long since finished dinner, and are polishing off a bottle of wine while a live band plays in the town square. Victor’s eyes sparkle, darting back and forth between the musicians, and the small crowd gathered to watch them, and Yuuri himself. Yuuri has learned to wait for the mischief that follows. “Dance with me,” he asks, and when Yuuri mutters about not really being much to dance with over the finishing swirl of his glass, Victor scoffs. “Nonsense,” he says. “You danced with me at the beginning of the summer, remember?” 

This is how Yuuri finds himself casting an apologetic glance to their waiter while he pats up the syrah he’s just snorted across the table.  _“What?”_

“Were you too tipsy to remember?” Victor asks, with his bow mouth and arrow smile, which sails straight for Yuuri’s heart and never misses. He stands up, folds his napkin, extends one of his hands. “I’ll tell you all about it.” Yuuri’s an interloper on the arts of Terpsichore: he took lessons under Minako years ago, and a dance class in undergrad, but these handfuls of experience are different than being led across the square by Victor and swept into close-quarters. The warmth of Victor’s hand on his back burns through his shirt. “It must’ve been right at the end of May,” Victor recalls, humming into the shell of Yuuri’s ear. “You didn’t let me lead last time.”

“I got here right at the end of May,” Yuuri replies, as Victor leads him through a twist. Then he remembers, with sudden, devastating clarity, how Minako hauled him out of the house not a minute after his arrival for some start-of-summer festival, how she’d bought the first few rounds, and told him to get over his sulk. He remembers that, and his hangover, and absolutely nothing else. “... I’m an awful drunk,” Yuuri hisses, cursing the oblivion Lethe offers at the bottom of every bottle while Victor barks delighted laughter. “It’s not funny! It’s embarrassing!”

“You were very charming,” says Victor, which almost makes up for it, until he grins unapologetically and adds: “You said my shirt was made of boyfriend material.”  _Kill me,_ Yuuri mutters, and of course Victor refuses.  _Never._ Like every other night, Victor gives Yuuri a ride back up the hill to the villa on the back of the Vespa, and like every other night Yuuri stands toe-to-toe with him, leans close, gets ready to say goodnight. Tonight all he can think of is Victor’s hand on the small of his back, the pomegranate and cinnamon notes of their bottle of wine, and the way the summer eventually ends.

“Minako is in Paris,” Yuuri whispers, though there’s no one around to hear it other than Victor. No one to tell either of them what they can’t have. “Do you want to come in?”

“Please,” replies Victor, and so Yuuri leads him through a dark and empty house, guided by moonlight and memory. There’s a startling intimacy to the way Victor turns to him, the way he reverently cups Yuuri’s face. Yuuri’s fingers catch on every one of the buttons of Victor’s shirt, and on the planes of his shoulders.  _Love, the limb-loosener,_ he thinks, as Victor helps him pull his t-shirt over his head. They kiss slow and unhurried, and Yuuri’s fingers traverse the labyrinth of Victor’s body, doubling back time and time again over his clavicles, his ribs, his abdomen. If there’s some spool of thread to find his way out now, he doesn’t want it. He’d rather be lost.

Victor’s unabashed, kicking out of his pants and then pulling them back to the waiting bed, where he can draw Yuuri down into the nest he’s made out of his arms. In the silver light that trickles in through a window, he’s alabaster-pale, as white-washed as the statues they’ve wandered between. He cannot possibly be a mere mortal, except for the all-too-human, wine-dark vulnerability of his gaze, or the increasing hunger of his hips and his hands. “Do you even know,” Yuuri wonders aloud, as he kisses a path down Victor’s abdomen, sinking between the rise of his bare legs, gorgeous in starlight, “how beautiful you are?”

“Do  _you?_ ” Victor asks, though his breath hitches as Yuuri mouths at his thighs. Yuuri wants to scoff, but Victor’s face is too earnest in the dark, and he’s too cut open to lie.  _Do you know?_  Yuuri doesn’t, but Victor can almost make him believe it. For now, Yuuri has had his fill of words; he takes Victor into his mouth and tries not to tell himself that for every kiss, he’s swallowed a seed, soaking up time from a place he doesn’t actually belong and will someday have to leave.

 

\- - -

 

 

> **pomegranate**    
>  from  _someone in a future time_
> 
> by Yuuri Katsuki   
>   
> 
> \- - -  
> 
> 
> there is something so curious   
>  about something you tear open   
>  to consume.
> 
> the ruddy seeds  
>  the sweet interior   
>  the sticky-sweet dribble   
>  across the chin and down, into   
>  the hollow of the throat
> 
> there is always a moment   
>  poised at the apex   
>  of winter and spring.   
>    
>  it is neither   
>  the one thing   
>  nor the other
> 
> it is its own beast,   
>  a creature stitched together   
>  from two bodies   
>    
>  which knows only   
>  the word  _oh._
> 
> anyway,   
>  i want more fruit   
>  more kisses like rubies   
>  in the palm of my hands.   
>    
>  whole fistfuls, if i must   
>  enough to shout  _look,_ _  
> __you’re stuck with me now._


	7. the muses

The guest bedroom Yuuri uses inside of Minako’s house has a bay window, a box full of bougainvillea, and a view that faces east, looking out over the swimming pool and down the hill to the sea. With the exterior shutters thrown open out of habit, the linen curtains always prove to be an insufficient defense against each spear of morning sunlight. At the start of the summer Yuuri had considered it an inconvenience; now, here he sits, notebook open against his knee, watching streaks of gold creep higher and higher on Victor’s bare chest. This morning, Yuuri is writing about Eos, the goddess of dawn. Homer wrote her with saffron robes and rosy-fingers, and under her soft caress, Victor slowly stirs and comes to life. He sits up on his elbows, sheets sliding to his waist, and offers an endearing, drowsy smile. “Good morning,” Victor murmurs. His smile blooms the way Yuuri’s memories of the night before keep doing; they are a book he will read over and over again, until the pages curl and the spine cracks. “... Writing?” He asks, so soft and sleepy still that Yuuri barely resists the urge to put everything away, and close the shutters, and climb back into bed. They have the house to themselves; some part of Yuuri wants to use it, wants to make breakfast with Victor at his hip, and then press him back against the counter; wants to lead him down to the pool. Another part likes that the world has shrunk to so small and intimate a space. _Mhmm,_ he hums, and already knows to expect the question that comes next. It does not take much to ignite Victor’s curiosity; Victor is the kind of person who is always burning. The night before has shown Yuuri that he has more in common with that than he previously dared to think. “What about?”

Yuuri looks down at a half-composed verse and hesitates; so far, he’s resisted sharing his work. Victor waits for his decision, open and patient, and finally Yuuri reads: “Dawn is not another celestial body / yet always the ancients grant her a place.” He’s not quite ready to look at Victor, knows that in myths there is always some danger of glancing back and being lost. “She commands nothing, not her brother the sun, not her sister the moon. And yet: witness her rising ...” Yuuri pauses there, on the brink of another one of his embarrassing admissions. “... I’m trying to say something about how double-sided it is, to have the gift of another morning, and to also be bereft because there will never be enough mornings, and already there’s one morning less,” he explains.  In three more weeks he needs to do something with his life, needs to submit his thesis or return to London to grapple with it for an extra semester, a victory lap that is anything but. The ending of this season has always been on the periphery, inevitable, but it’s never been something Yuuri’s wanted or dared to discuss. He imagines he will go back, grateful for this impossible, singular summer, this stay in the land of the gods, these fairy-tale days he’s gotten to spend with Victor. Still: he is a writer. He knows something about the ways stories are meant to end.

Victor is as perceptive as ever about Yuuri’s hidden self. Yuuri has never been with someone like this before; has never known what it might be like to carry on two conversations at once. On the surface, he asks, “... for your thesis?”

Below that there are hidden layers which are difficult and dangerous to navigate. In how many stories is the lover brought back from the underworld, permitted to have a second life, a different ending? Still, they dance around the topic, stumbling through the dark. Yuuri is in love and does not know the way. “No,” he replies. He figures the least he can do is give Victor an explanation. “My advisor fell ill, and so I was reassigned to another professor. I had been doing a lot of writing about inadequacy and anxiety, but he found it underwhelming.” Admitting to the fact that he hasn’t revisited it here is owning up to the worst sort of procrastination, but it’s the truth, and Yuuri won’t lie to Victor. “I don’t like revisiting failures,” he adds. “I’ve been working on other material, mostly.”

He’s been writing about the Greeks, sure, but what he’s really been writing about is the way Victor emerged from the sea one hot summer day, and how he holds a lantern up to Yuuri’s life and sees him as he really is. He is writing about how if he looks back now, he’ll be lost. Victor tilts his head and considers a response carefully. “I think,” he suggests, as he climbs out of bed and pads over to the window, where he can brush back Yuuri’s bangs and press a kiss to his forehead, “you should work on writing about the things you love the most. That’s the only shortcut I know.” His touch is softer than any of the dawn metaphors Yuuri can conjure. “I’d like to read more sometime,” he admits, “if you’d feel comfortable.”

It’s so beautifully, terribly Victor. Always meeting Yuuri where he is. Yuuri comes to a singular and shocking conclusion as he looks up at the brilliant blue of Victor’s eyes. _Everything I have is already yours._ It’s too soon to feel this much for one person. Objectively, Yuuri knows that. Just like he also knows that no one else will ever compare. “I don’t … feel comfortable, in general. I’m an anxious mess whenever I know people are reading something I wrote.”

“Then why go to the trouble?” Victor asks quietly, echoing the same question Yuuri asked him just two weeks before, standing in the ruins of the place where Pythia once said _Know Thyself_ . Yuuri already knows the answer: it’s one of those things he simply can’t _not_ do.

“... You can see them,” he admits. _They’re all about you, anyway._ It takes some time to re-copy the poems in their current state out of his notebook and into another one, but he does it while Victor gets ready for a dive scheduled in the afternoon. Yuuri lets him leave with it, and spends his entire afternoon wandering aimlessly through town, trying to cope with his racing heartbeat and the terror of own feelings, laid out like a raw nerve in Victor’s hands, a glass heart made to be shattered.

Victor has a life to get to and a career to figure out, and it’s too hard and too much to think of trying to do that together, when tomorrow Victor might get a call from Cairo or from Athens. The fates could send him off to a site half the world away, and Yuuri would want him there, working at what he loves with the brilliance and passion and dedication that Yuuri, himself, is so in love with. _I can write to him,_ he thinks. It hurts to contemplate exchanging emails, or reading Victor’s drafts, or sharing cordial letters. It’s an imagined reality in which they drift further and further apart, until even Yuuri cannot pinpoint their precise ending. Perhaps it’d be better entirely to stand firm: _when summer’s over, let’s end this._

Yuuri has come to no conclusions by the end of the day. He is waiting at the marina when Victor steps off the ship, and watches as Victor races down the dock. Yuuri does not expect the way Victor collides with him, all arms and lips, a ridiculous display made in front of the locals and all of his colleagues. Yuuri has crumpled on an impact he did not expect; together they are a heap of limbs on the dock, a mess everyone else will have to step over in order to leave. “I wanted to surprise you the way you’ve surprised me,” Victor breathes. Yuuri can almost ignore Yuri Plisetsky’s harpy-screeching in the background about how gross and stupid they both are, and how they need to get a room. Yuuri will give him that part; he’s probably on to something. Victor helps him up and fishes the little notebook out of his back pocket. He presses it carefully to Yuuri’s chest. “Publish _this,_ ” he says.

“I don’t even know if they’ll accept it, as my thesis.”

“They will.” Victor’s faith in him, his certainty, is thrilling. Yuuri objects that he’s still due back in London, but Victor’s undeterred. “I know.”

“You know?”

Victor laughs. It’s a real laugh: big and bright, the kind that makes him throw his head back and toss his hair. “Of course I know. You have a career to figure out, too,” he says. “A degree to go and get. I just have designs on you afterwards. I think maybe five poetry anthologies is fair before we pick a town to settle down and be professors in, don’t you?”

Yuuri feels his mouth open and close. “You’re a crazy person.” Victor wants _this?_ The uncertainty of two careers; the distance of whole countries?

“You’re in love with a crazy person,” Victor laughs, pulling Yuuri closer and ducking his head to nuzzle at Yuuri’s pulse. It’s apparently too much for Yuri Plisetsky to tolerate: with surprising force, the teen shoves Victor’s back as he passes by, and sends them both careening into the water. Later, Victor will howl at him for ruining the notebook Yuuri made for him. For now, though, he is a creature of light and laughter, of life and love, and he keeps Yuuri close as they paddle back to the dock, soaking wet and dripping with a happiness nothing can dampen. _Publish this.  Publish it and then stay close to me._

 

\- - -

 

> **Invocation of the Muse** **  
> ** the dedication page,   
>  from _someone in a future time  
>  _
> 
> by Yuuri Katsuki
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -
> 
>  
> 
> This is for you, dear one.  
>  It is a declaration.  
>  It is also a challenge:  
>  that try as they might,   
>  I will be the one who holds you   
> for the rest of history.
> 
> _Beloved_ , you must know:  
>  you suffuse every page of this work,  
>  and when I say it is yours,  
>  I am really talking about   
> something else entirely. 


End file.
